Lining the floor of the passageway on both sides were jumbled heaps of bones. In her hand, the bulb end of the flashlight was already growing warm. Oy was barking frantically, looking back into the dark with his head down and his short legs splayed, every hair standing on end.
"Squat down, Roland, squat!"
He did and she handed him the makeshift torch, which was already beginning to gutter, the yellow flames running up and down the stainless steel barrel turning blue. The thing in the dark let out another deafening roar, and now she could see its shape again, weaving from side to side. It was creeping closer as the light faltered.
If the floor's wet here, we're most likely done, she thought, but the touch of her fingers as she groped for a thighbone suggested it was not. Perhaps that was a false message sent by her hopeful senses-she could certainly hear water dripping from the ceiling somewhere up ahead-but she didn't think so.
She reached into the bag for another can of Sterno, but at first the release-ring defied her. The thing was coming and now she could see any number of short, misshapen legs beneaui its raised lump of a head. Not a worm after all but some kind of giant centipede. Oy placed himself in front of her, still barking, every tooth on display. It was Oy the thing would take first if she couldn't-
Then her finger slipped into the ring lying almost flat against the lid of the can. There was a pop-hissh sound. Roland was waving die flashlight back and forth, trying to fan a litde life into the guttering flames (which might have worked had there been fuel for them), and she saw their fading shadows rock deliriously back and fordi on the decaying tile walls.
The circumference of die bone was too big for the can. Now lying in an awkward sprawl, half in and half out of the harness, she dipped into it, brought out a handful of jelly, and slathered it up and down the bone. If the bone was wet, this would only buy them a few more seconds of horror. If it was dry, however, then maybe... just maybe...
The thing was creeping ever closer. Amid the tentacles sprouting from its mouth she could see jutting fangs. In another moment it would be close enough to lunge at Oy, taking him with the speed of a gecko snatching a fly out of the air. Its rotted-fish aroma was strong and nauseating. And what might be behind it? What other abominations?
No time to think about that now.
She touched her thighbone torch to the fading flames licking along the barrel of the flashlight. The bloom of fire was greater than she had expected-far greater-and the thing's scream this time was filled with pain as well as surprise. There was a nasty squelching sound, like mud being squeezed in a vinyl raincoat, and it lashed backward.
"Git me more bones," she said as Roland cast the flashlight aside. "And make sure they're dem drah bones." She laughed at her own wit (since nobody else would), a down-anddirty Detta cackle.
Still gasping for breath, Roland did as she told him.
THIRTEEN
They resumed their progress along the passage, Susannah now riding backward, a position that was difficult but not impossible.
If they got out of here, her back would ache a bitch for the next day or two. And I'll relish every single throb, she told herself.
Roland still had the Bridgton Old Home Days tee-shirt Irene Tassenbaum had bought him. He handed it up to Susannah.
She wrapped it around the bottom of the bone and held it out as far as she possibly could while still keeping her balance.
Roland wasn't able to run-she would have surely tumbled out of the harness had he tried doing that-but he maintained a good fast walking pace, pausing every now and then to pick up a likely-looking arm- or legbone. Oy soon got the idea and began bringing them to the gunslinger in his mouth. The thing continued to follow them. Every now and then Susannah caught a glimpse of its slick-gleaming skin, and even when it drew back beyond the chancy light of her current torch they would hear those liquid stomping sounds, like a giant in mudfilled boots. She began to think it was the sound of the thing's tail. This filled her with a horror that was unreasoning and private and almost powerful enough to undo her mind.
That it should have a tail! her mind nearly raved. A tail that sounds like it's filled with water or jelly or half-coagulated blood!
Christ! My God! My Christ!
It wasn't just light keeping it from attacking them, she reckoned, but fear of fire. The thing must have hung back while they were in the part of the passage where the glow-globes still worked, thinking (if it could think) that it would wait and take them once they were in the dark. She had an idea that if it had known they had access to fire, it might simply have closed some or all of its many eyes and pounced on them where a few of the globes were out and the light was dimmer. Now it was at least temporarily out of luck, because the bones made surprisingly good torches (the idea that they were being helped by the recovering Beam in this regard did not cross her mind). The only question was whether or not the Sterno would hold out.
She was able to conserve now because the bones burned on their own once they were going-except for a couple of damp ones that she had to cast aside after lighting her next torches from their guttering tips-but you did have to get diem going, and she was already deep into the third and last can. She bitterly regretted the one she'd tossed away when the thing had been closing in on them, but didn't know what else she could have done. She also wished Roland would go faster, although she guessed he now couldn't have maintained much speed even if she'd been faced around the right way and holding onto him.
Maybe a short burst, but surely no more. She covild feel his muscles trembling under his shirt. He was close to blown out.
Five minutes later, while getting a handful of canned heat to slather on a bony bulb of knee atop a shinbone, her fingers touched the bottom of the Sterno can. From the darkness behind them came another of those watery stomping sounds.
The tail of their friend, her mind insisted. It was keeping pace.
Waiting for them to run out of fuel and for the world to go dark again. Then it would pounce.
Then it would eat.
FOURTEEN
They were going to need a fallback position. She became sure of that almost as soon as the tips of her fingers touched the bottom of the can. Ten minutes and three torches later, Susannah prepared to tell the gunslinger to stop when-and if-they came to another especially large ossuary. They could make a bonfire of rags and bones, and once it was going hot and bright, they'd simply run like hell. When-and if-they heard the thing on their side of the fire-barrier again, Roland could lighten his load and speed his heels by leaving her behind. She saw this idea not as self-sacrificing but merely logical-there was no reason for the monstrous centipede to get both of them if they could avoid it. And she had no plans to let it take her, as far as that went. Certainly not alive. She had his gun, and she'd use it. Five shots for Sai Centipede; if it kept coming after that, the sixth for herself.
Before she could say any of these things, however, Roland got in three words that stopped all of hers. "Light," he panted.
"Up ahead."
She craned around and at first saw nothing, probably because of the torch she'd been holding out. Then she did: a faint white glow.
"More of those globes?" she asked. "A stretch of them that are still working?"
"Maybe. I don't think so."
Five minutes later she realized she could see the floor and walls in the light of her latest torch. The floor was covered with a fine scrim of dust and pebbles such as could only have been blown in from outside. Susannah threw her arms up over her head, one hand holding a blazing bone wrapped in a shirt, and gave a scream of triumph. The thing behind her answered with a roar of fury and frustration that did her heart good even as it pebbled her skin with goosebumps.
"Goodbye, honey!" she screamed. "Goodbye, you eyecovered muthafuck!"
It roared again and thrust itself forward. For one moment she saw it plain: a huge round lump that couldn't be called a face in spite of the lolling mouth; the segmented body, scratched and oozing from contact with the rough walls; a quartet of stubby armlike appendages, two on each side. These ended in snapping pincers. She shrieked and thrust the torch back at it, and the thing retreated with another deafening roar.
"Did your mother never teach you that it's wrong to tease the animals?" Roland asked her, and his tone was so dry she couldn't tell if he was kidding her or not.
Five minutes after that they were out.
Chapter II:ON BADLANDS AVENUE
ONE
They exited through a crumbling hillside arch beside a Quonset hut similar in shape but much smaller than the Arc 16 Experimental Station. The roof of this little building was covered with rust. There were piles of bones scattered around the front in a rough ring. The surrounding rocks had been blackened and splintered in places; one boulder the size of the Queen Anne house where the Breakers had been kept was split in two, revealing an interior filled with sparkling minerals.
The air was cold and they could hear the resdess whine of the wind, but the rocks blocked the worst of it and they turned their faces up to the sharp blue sky with wordless gratitude.
"There was some kind of battle here, wasn't there?" she asked.
"Yes, I'd say so. A big one, long ago." He sounded utterly whipped.
A sign lay facedown on the ground in front of the Quonset's half-open door. Susannah insisted that he put her down so she could turn it over and read it. Roland did as she asked and then sat with his back propped against a rock, staring at Castle Discordia, which was now behind them. Two towers jutted into the blue, one whole and the other shattered off near what he judged had been the top. He concentrated on getting his breath back. The ground under him was very cold, and he knew already that their trek through the Badlands was going to be difficult.